A Small Guide to Great Website Design

A Small Guide to Great Website Design

Ok, so, there are many many many websites out there on the internet, almost 2 billion as of January 2018 to be exact according to Netcraft.com. So how do you stand apart from the masses? How do you hock your wares and/or services through your own portal (since using someone else’ will undoubtedly mean you will have to share profits)? And how do you keep yourself from going nuts while trying to figure these things out? Well, below we will look at a few ways in our small guide to great website design that will boost your online presence and have you stand out in the massive pack.

1) Find a great designer

Now, the first bit of advice is obviously a biased statement since this article is written by a professional graphic designer… but seeing as though nothing beats experience, find a professional to at least give you advice on how to proceed.

2) Do your research

Nothing beats a good book or well worded article on website design; there are literally hundreds of such on the subject. So read, read away. Take a class (in person or online). Find a business management mentor. Bottom line, get help. No man or woman is an island so feel free to reach out for assistance. There is nothing worse than a person who thinks they know everything while making billions of mistakes on the way to failure. Do not try to reinvent the wheel when there are thousands already created for you to ride.

There are tons of examples of sites that are similar to yours that you can copy from (not plagiarize but copy). Save yourself a world of headaches by studying sites that you like and incorporate their flow and ideas into your overall design.

3) Do not think you are special and that you don’t have to follow the rules (all of them)

There are a lot of rules that every designer has to follow when it comes to great website creation. Below are a few that are of the upmost importance:

Clear cut navigation – Normally, a website has only a few seconds to hold a person’s attention and one wrong click can destroy the online relationship in nanoseconds. The viewer should always feel comfortable with what their eyes are receiving and unfortunately, most people do not realize that sites with massive scrolling will quickly become tedious. So first, make sure your site is very interactive with a lot of clickable links… just make sure they lead to the right place.

Visual appeal – This one is so simple. If your site is not aesthetically appealing, no one will stay, let alone return.

Awesome content – OK, so the sight looks great but once someone starts reading, they find a bunch of gibberish that makes Lorem Ipsum read like fine poetry. No matter how visually appealing the site is, if it is not informative and easy to read then goodbye customer.

Stay away from stagnation – One of the hardest things to remember is to stay on top of your site. One should make changes to it at least every 30 days to stay relevant and to stay away from seeming outdated. The only thing worse than breaking the above rules is to have clients and customers come back to the same thing they saw months ago. It is a silent deal breaker and shows that you do not care about your own products/services/information… so why should they?

4) Make sure the site is not too busy

Yes, a lot of people love script type fonts. They are pretty and interesting and the first thought when seeing them is normally, “how beautiful”. However, they can be very hard to read so serifs and san serifs are always the way to go. Yes, they are boring and may seem mundane but guess what, they are very legible. What’s the point of having beauty if no one knows what they are really looking at or reading?

5) Images, images and more images

Yes, one can go overboard with too many images but since a picture is worth a thousand words, they are always welcome in website design (especially when well placed behind text). Great website design relies on great presentation.

Yes, it is not cheap but especially if you are selling stuff directly online, you will want SSL certificates.

Yes, it is a headache, but all photos and videos must be optimized (sized correctly) to have fast download speeds. Who wants to wait 30 seconds for a photo to appear?

Yes, I am sure you thought it was automatic but you will want to make sure your site is responsive so that it fits well on all devices. Who wants to blow up sections of your site on their phone just to be able to read it? Your site should reformat itself when it is on a computer, tablet and or smartphone.

So, in a nutshell, website design may seem daunting but it is very doable. Just make sure to stay away (if your budget allows) from web builders. They may be easy to create but they are also easy to create for everybody which often leads to thousands of sites looking just like yours. Indeed, it is not easy to learn HTML, CSS and the like, but the 4-8 weeks spent learning these code types will make all the difference in the world in the long run.

Cut corners and go cheap and get cheap results. Take your time and learn the rules of great website design and you will conquer the World Wide Web. There are tons of tools out there to help but you will not find them here. Remember, I’m a graphic designer by trade, of course I want you to come to me for advice first.